The Offing: Sister Quintana & the Berlin Germany Mission

Hallo meine geliebte Familie und Freunde,

I apologize for not having written earlier. Things have been quite hectic on my end of things. Some of you may or may not be aware of this already, but I am home. As I write I pray that you will feel the same spirit I felt as everything has been occurring in my life. I know at some points you will feel it stronger than others, you will think "why am I getting emotional?" well, you are not. That is the Spirit of God telling you what I am sharing is true. Remember and hold onto that.

I should probably start by clarifying that I am perfectly healthy. If you have been following my mission, you will know that I love my mission. I do not think I have ever loved something and a people more than I have met throughout these past 15 months. That has not changed and will always be in my heart. That being said, as weeks continued to go by in Neubrandenburg I could not help but feel uneasiness. I could not understand it because I love Sister Jens…

This week has been filled with miracle after miracle after miracle. Yesterday we found 3 people to teach within 2 minutes of one another, it was amazing! This transfer Sister Jensen and I have been striving to follow Christ in a way we have not done before. We have really been stretching our spiritual capacities and relying heavily on the gift of the Holy Ghost to guide us to the exact place where we need to be. And we always have been.
Apart from having teaching appointments suddenly fill our week, the most touching miracle this week involves a member who we are reteaching. She is a warrior and is trying to follow the footsteps of Christ. We knew we had to teach her in a way that she would be able to understand, so we prepared to teach her as if we were teaching a child. We had no clue how we would transition from small talk to a doctrinal lesson, but the precious thing about  teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ is that the Holy Ghost will always guide you to what you can say or do. S…

Hello meine Lieben,
It has been quite a week! We traveled twice to Berlin within 3 days of each other. Our conference with our Mission President was amazing. The main emphasis has continued to be on following our spiritual promptings and having the courage to do so. As humans we tend to feel abandoned or alone at one point or another, but the beauty of knowing why we're here on earth replaces fear and worries with peace and comfort. Some time our eyes will be opened to the realities of God, and we will experience that we have never been alone. This is all possible through the Holy Ghost, the spirit given to us by God to be able to manifest His love and personal messages to us in ways we will only understand.
Following spiritual promptings has been one of my favorite things to do while serving. One week, Sister Jensen and I saw these two men walking and felt a strong impression that we needed to turn the car around and talk to them. We were worried about the things we needed to do to…

Hello my beloved friends and family! These past couple weeks have been amazing. Sister Jensen and I have been seen a lot of miracles popping up every second.
We met with a less active sister from our branch a couple weeks ago and it was such a great experience. I had heard about previous experiences with her and I was a little frightened going into the appointment, but her heart was touched the entire time. We got to know her on a personal level that the missionaries were not able to do before! She even gave us African names.
This past week was a little slower than the one before, but we have grown closer to God because of it. The things we pray for has changed and our determination to accomplish His will for the day just grows stronger. It's been a bit frustrating in the mornings though since we will be trying to plan for our day and nothing will come into our mind. However, once we get to the part of our day when we had no idea as to where we needed to be, what we needed to be doi…

I think my favorite miracle of this week happened yesterday. We were on our way home after our church meetings and we were biking through the park. There's a steep bridge were all bikers are asked to get off and walk up of it. As we were approaching this bridge, we looked to our side and the sun just looked so beautiful as it reflected on the water. We decided to stop and take a quick picture. Well as we were doing so, I noticed this woman sitting on a bench by the water (little did I know that Sister Jensen had noticed her too). There was just something about this woman that I couldn't let go of. We started to head on our way as we once were. This woman was getting up and walking toward the path we were about to leave. I just kept looking at her and she was looking at me back. There was just something in her eyes I couldn't let go of. However, Sister Jensen was getting further and further away and I knew I needed to catch up to her. The distance was pretty long enough to …

I can't believe tomorrow is the beginning of a new year. I'm so grateful I was given the opportunity to spend 2018 in Germany. I always wanted to live abroad in Europe and i never thought that would come true haha.
This past year has been one of the best years of my life. The most precious thing to me (among meeting some of my best friends and experiencing so many great and challenging moments) has been how much closer I've gotten to my Father in Heaven than ever before. My perspective on life has changed immensely. As I've studied the doctrine we teach, I've gained a stronger testimony of it's truth. I know we once lived with God, our Father who love us immensely. I know he wants to give us so many blessing that he created a plan of happiness for each of us. I know he created this world so we could come here and obtain a body, so we could be born into families and meet dear ones to us where we can learn together, love together, and experience true happiness. I …

I just want to wish you all a belated merry Christmas! I had no clue that our preparation day would be changed to today... I spent my first week in Neubrandenburg and it was awesome! Germans celebrate Christmas for three days!!! I am beyond grateful to have been able to have a second Christmas in Germany.
On Sunday we decided to go street contacting. We turned onto a street and were walking and I was just looking at the homes we were passing. All of the sudden my eyes caught sight of a Christmas tree in the window of a second story home. I stopped walking and pondered whether or not we needed to go klingel this home. Sister Hiatt and Sister Jensen asked if I wanted to go and I ended up saying yes. I am grateful we went. We klingeled and after a couple of seconds a young boy comes to the door and we ask him if his parents are home and that we are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ and would like to share a Christmas message with them. Well, he said he would go get them and clos…

Boy do I have news to share!
We received a call from the assistants to our Mission President this past Tuesday, this is how our conversation went:
Elder: Hi Flensburg Sisters, how are you doing? Us: We're doing good, thank you. How are you doing?  Elders: We're doing good too Us: That's awesome to hear! What can we do for you? Elders: Well Sisters, are you ready for your transfer call? Us: You're lying  Elders: No Sisters, we are not *Insert laugh*
And indeed it was not a lie. Sister Vreugdenhil and I have been transferred out of Flensburg. Our time in Flensburg and together has reached its end. Sister Vreugdenhil is going to the Hannover area to be with a Sister whose companion is going home, and I'm on a train headed to Neubrandenburg-- in the Berlin area. 
Within these past 10 weeks about 30 Sisters have finished their missions and reported home. Crazy.
This past week was filled with preparations to leave. My entire mission I have been praying to be able to witness someone…

We experienced a huge miracle this past week. We were given 20€ by our Mission President to serve someone as a companionship. We prayed a lot about how we could use the money and for whom. We felt we needed to buy flowers for 2 of our members. One of these members is a less active member in our branch, who we had never contacted before. Nevertheless, her name popped into our head. We asked the other member (we had given flowers to) to come with us. We were quite scared going into this, primarily because this sister had said she didn't want much to do with the church. However, we also knew God wouldn't lead us astray because we were acting on His prompting. We klingeled and made our way up to the last floor. We looked up at the stairs ahead us and saw a woman looking down at us. She was not happy. She let us in, but she was not happy. We told her we brought a member with us and that she was still going up the stairs. That made her even more unhappy. We all went into her apartme…